Friday, 28 December 2012

Palestine from a
Palestinian persepective does not receive the coverage it deseerves. This novel
goes some way in addressing that deficit. It is one of those rare birds: a good
political novel. First published in 2011, now, gratifyingly published in
paperback, it is Dabbagh’s debut novel and what a debut it is. In the affluent north
and west the mainstream canon consists largely of novels about existential
problems, individualised dilemmas and psychological analyses; politics are
either non-existent or play a small, subsidiary role. Dabbagh puts politics
firmly centre stage. But, she is no primitive propagandist or evangelist, and
is able to see both the Israeli oppressors and the popular movements of her own
people through un-tinted spectacles.She
gives us a moving portrait of a family torn apart by the post-war developments
that have taken place in Palestine.
The fate and fortunes of the members of this family reflect the political developments
that impinge daily and determine the trajectory of the people’s lives. It is a
Palestinian family torn asunder by the post war developments that have
shattered Palestine and imposed the
state of Israel
on a country where its historical inhabitants – the Palestinian Arabs - considered
it their home. She cleverly and subtly interweaves this historical process into
the fabric of the family, their friends and relatives. Through the individual
fates of each family member we are helped to comprehend the way the struggle
for one’s rights against an intransigent and brutal enemy so often also
distorts and maims the protagonists themselves, and how a once united struggle
became fragmented, pitting Palestinian against Palestinian. With the gradual corruption
of the PLO leadership and the movement’s loss of momentum and clear leadership
after the Intifada, we can comprehend the reasons behind the rise of Hamas.
What began as a largely unified and secular struggle became split, first
between small, ultra-left guerrilla groups and the mainstream PLO and then
later, after their extinction, between a fundamentalist, religious rebellion in
Gaza against the rump of the old
PLO.

Iman, a young woman with a twin brother, Rashid, is the
central figure of the novel and we hear much of the story through her telling.
After experiencing the viciousness of Israeil attacks on Gaza
and losing several friends to Israeli guns and bombs, she and her brother
Rashid soon find themselves in temporary exile in London.
Their father, previously a committed member of the PLO leadership, now lives in
one of the Gulf states in relatively
comfortable exile, alienated from his people’s struggle.

Dabbagh vividly portrays the pain and destructive influence of
exile - the feelings of rootlessness, anger and frustration. While Palestinians
are being massacred by superior Israeli missiles and air raids, in London,
travelling on the Tube or on the busses, she and her brother are obliged to
overhear the small talk of their fellow passengers whose problems revolve
around where to go abroad on holiday, their marital tiffs or which furnishings
to choose for their homes; in their minds Palestine and the suffering of its
people simply doesn’t exist.

Dabbagh’s language is sculpted and sharp, at times poetic,
always laconic and often with a light touch of irony. Her descriptions of London,
through the eyes of a foreigner, a temporary visitor, go deeper beneath the
patina and surface glitter than an ordinary tourist would; her viewpoint is
coloured by her people’s history, British colonialism and world domination –
here vision is politically tinted.

She watches TV avidly to soak up all and every bit of news
from the Middle East, but is disgusted by the Orwellian
double-speak of the ‘embedded’ reporters: talking of Israeli ‘surgical
strikes’, their ‘tactical incursions’ or understandable ‘responses’ to Hamas
provocations.

Out of It is extremely well-written, with a well-developed
storyline, believable, three-dimensional characters, and is a gripping read
that draws you into the daily trauma that passes as normality for most
Palestinians.

By Julian Assange with Jacob Appelbaum, Andy Müller-Maguhn and Jérémie
Zimmermann
OR Books
Pbck £11
With the release of the first batch of WikiLeaks secret data in 2006 the
online site rapidly gained a reputation for investigative journalism, and for
revealing classified data from anonymous sources. WikiLeaks is a
non-profitorganisation with the goal of
bringing "important news and information to the public,’ and ‘to publish
original source material alongside news stories so readers and historians alike
can see evidence of the truth.’ Another of the organisation's goals is to
ensure that journalists and whistleblowers are not jailed for emailing
sensitive or classified documents. The online ‘drop box’ was designed to
‘provide an innovative, secure and anonymous way for sources to leak
information’ to its journalists.’
In 2010 WikiLeaks collaborated with the Guardian, Der Spiegel and New York
Times to release a whole batch of classified US State Department diplomatic
cables in redacted format. This created an international éclat and brought down
the whole vindictive fury of the US
government on Assange’s head as well as severe censure from its allies. As the
founder and chief spokesperson of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange, overnight was
thrust into world-wide prominence. By those on the Left he was revered as a
revolutionary icon and by the Right viewed as a heinous criminal who had
overstepped the accepted norms of journalism. But many throughout the world
considered that what he had done was a genuine contribution to media freedom
and openness. WikiLeaks became the winner of the 2008 Economist Index on
Censorship Freedom of Expression award and the 2009 Amnesty International human
rights reporting award (New Media). However, shortly after all the accolades,
Assange the hero became a demonised fugitive.

In August 2010 Assange was invited to Sweden on a speaking
tour and apparently had sexually relations with two women who, three days later,
accused him of ‘rape and sexual molestation’, leading the Swedish Prosecutor’s
Office to issue an arrest warrant for Assange. Whatever the truth about these
allegations, Assange saw them as a means of trapping him in Sweden
and eventually facilitating his extradition to the US.
Unfortunately, whatever the truth of the matter, Assange suddenly became a
figure of controversy, not to say one of revulsion, for alleged activities that
had nothing to do with his role as the founder and advocate of WikiLeaks. In
one sense his enemies had been partially successful: he had not as yet been put
on trial in the USA
but his name and that of WikiLeaks had been irredemably besmirched.

I am one of those who remains sceptical of the Swedish
allegations of sexual transgression, despite the gravity of the accusations, and
I certainly remain an admirer of what he has done as a journalist to expose Western
government hypocrisy and unnecessary secrecy. I remain convinced that in revealing
the contents of diplomatic exchanges and emails, demonstrating the hypocrisy,
deviousness and indeed criminality of the US
and other governments, he has done us all a vital service.

This latest book, despite accolades from highly respected
individuals like John Pilger, Slavoj Zizek, Naomi Wolf and Oliver Stone is often
more irritating than illuminating, but it is also certainly a provocative and
fascinating read. Written mainly in the form of a dialogue between Assange and
his co-authors, Appelbaum, Müller-Maguhn and Zimmermann, it explores the proposition
that the internet has become more of a big brother system of surveillance than
a great new means of free and democratic communication.

It is written in a loose conversational style with much
anorak jargon, rather than attempting to offer a clear distillation of ideas
for a wider readership. However, it does provoke reflection.

Like all inventions, the internet is only a tool to be used
or misused. With the concentration of all main servers in the USA,
it does provide the corporate and political ruling elite enormous access to
every user’s profile and personal details. It is a secret service agent’s dream
come true. And we, its naïve and unwitting useers provide these governmetn and
corporate agencies all the information they want through our facebook, Twitter
and Google pages and non-encrypted electronic exchanges.

While his enemies will call Assange simply paranoid (even
though he has good reasons to be), he does argue persuasively that we are all
too-readily handing over to the powers that be data about ourselves for free. He
argues that only be utilising methods like cryptography to encrypt all the
information we send out over the internet can we keep government and corporate noses
out of our affairs.

Certainly the vitally important questions of who controls the internet
and how we can ensure that it remains/becomes a genuine democratic source of
inforamtion and exchange are of fundamental importance to freedom and democracy
worldwide. Assange’s book is a wake-up call about a possible dystopian future.
Jeremiahs, like Assange, are as Pilger says, ‘always met at first with
hostility and even mockery, history shows that we disregard such warnings as
these at our peril.’ While this book is certainly not the definitive treatise
on the role of the internet, it is a stimulating and thought-provoking read.

Saturday, 22 December 2012

Reply to William Boyd 'The Price of Betrayal' in Guardian Review 22 December 2012 on the Cambridge spies

What William Boyd, like so many other Western commentators who
discuss the Cold War period, fails to comprehend properly is the political
climate of the Thirties and how it profoundly affected workers and intellectuals
alike in their political outlooks. Fascism, as demonstrated in Spain
and Italy and Moseley’s
Black Shirts here in the UK,
was on a seemingly unstoppable onward march. Many at that time joined the
Communist Party or sympathised because they recognised that their own ruling
classes were either sympathetic to or incapable of resisting fascism. Only the
Communists demonstrated that they were prepared to mount the barricades to stop
fascism in its tracks. This is the context in which Philby, Blunt etc. threw in
their lot with Communism.

Boyd relishes in calling them all ‘traitors’ to their
country and ‘aiding the enemy’. The term is more usually used in times of war
for those who pass on secrets to a real enemy. Russia
was our ally for the war years and certainly never threatened the West in any
way, but was soon cast aside again once nazi Germany
was defeated; it never called Britain
or the US the ‘enemy’.
It was determined to ‘defeat’ capitalism in the economic sphere certainly, but
by peaceful struggle. It was we who demonised Russia
as ‘the enemy’. Those with short-term memory forget that it was the US
General McArthur who, even before the nazis had capitulated, called for the war
to becarried forward into Russia
and thus defeat both the nazis and the communists.

It can be convincingly argued that the role Philby, Burgess,
McLean et al played in passing on information of (mainly) US
military intentions and weapons development played a key role in stabilising
the post war world and helped maintain the edgy balance of power.

Boyd also argues that Philby and the other spies ‘had to
live in a world where there was no trust’ in order to ‘be successful’. They
certainly did not trust the ruling elites in the UK
and US – they knew first hand how devious and dangerous they could be – but they
did trust their Soviet colleagues who protected them and offered them refuge
when they needed it.

Saturday, 1 December 2012

Harold Evans is bang on target (A clever solution – but why
the silence on ownership? - Guardian 30 November). In all the howling and
squealing about the need to ‘maintain the freedom of the press’ hardly anyone
is addressing this key issue. Freedom only has meaning if equal access and
diversity is guaranteed. For Cameron et al to cry wolf about ‘state interference’
and the danger of overthrowing a long and proud tradition of a free press
displays a lack of knowledge of history. The press throughout its short history
has been censored by the ruling elite with, fines, bans and stamp duties
imposed to prevent the publication of popular, usually,working class
newspapers. Only since the increasing concentration of ownership in the hands
of the wealthy has the state ceased hounding the press. Leveson’s modest suggestion
is, in any case, not calling for state regulation, simply giving a putative
regulatory body statutory powers; otherwise it would remain a toothless poodle
like the present Press Complaints Commission.